National Association of Manufacturers

Founded in 1895, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) is the largest manufacturing trade association in the United States, with 11,000 member companies. NAM has a long history of using advertising to push its ideals on the public. In the 1940’s, NAM ran an advertising campaign criticizing the New Deal, with one such ad carrying the headline “The American Way is to the Right” over an image that implied government investment (a euphemism for the New Deal) would lead to Nazism and communism. Other ads were less direct, but promoted NAM’s pro-business and anti-union goals.

National Association of Manufacturers WWII ad

NAM has a long history of running front groups, PR and greenwashing campaigns on various environmental issues. In recent years, NAM seems to have shopped around for PR firms, using twelve different companies since 2008. For the most part, the PR companies involved in these campaigns are not well documented.

DCI Group has been contracted by NAM for PR services since 2008, with a four-year break between 2009 and 2012, paying them a total of $12.7 million into 2017. DCI Group has been the largest consistent NAM contractor in recent years receiving, on average, $2.1 million per year from 2013 to 2017 for “consulting services.”

The Sunlight Foundation highlighted NAM’s relationship with Target Enterprises in a2012 article that revealed NAM paid the advertising firm to run campaign ads against Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown.NAM’s 990 from that year show a $1.4m contract with Target Enterprises, for the purpose of “media ads & services.”